Juan Carlos Ramírez Abadía

I am sure you remember the great Pirulito from the “Snitch Cartel”. ¿Did you know that his real name is Juan Carlos Ramírez Abadía and that his nickname is “Chupeta” (lollipop)? Stay with me so you can find out more about his life.

¿Who is Juan Carlos Ramírez Abadía?

In all human activity, there is always someone who is distinguished, not for getting the same and more than others dedicated to it but for their personal characteristics, for being one of a kind. Juan Carlos Ramírez Abadía is one of those.

Many of the colleagues of the drug dealers union come from fragmented families, from an overwhelming poverty that led them to abandon their studies to collaborate with the maintenance of the numerous offspring that make up their family group, from humble jobs that does not allow them to earn enough to finance what they call a decent life. Life pushed them until that moment where they decide to live on the margin and put everything on risk.

Juan Carlos Ramírez Abadía, aka Chupeta, was born on February 19, 1963, in the very hot Palmira, a city near Cali. Juan Carlos was distinguished for his sophisticated manners, coming from a family of upper middle class, who after his degree of Economist, aspired to see him graduate in a very expensive Masters in business administration.

¿Why was Juan Carlos Ramírez Nicknamed Chupeta?

Juan Carlos earned the nickname of Chupeta due to his obsession with the so-called Colombinas, a popular trademark of a candy known generically as lollipop.

¿How did Juan Carlos Ramírez start in drug trafficking?

Juan Carlos entered the narcotics distribution business, doing an internship in the laboratories owned by Orlando Henao Montoya under the orders of the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers, emblematic representatives of the Cali Cartel.

Later, Chupeta would climb positions until he became one of the leaders of the North Valley Cartel.

Juan Carlos the Violent

“Chupeta” was a person who has not given into discussions and to delegate certain tasks such as the elimination of subjects who showed little willingness to collaborate with his objectives, so he took care of it himself.

This was demonstrated when he murdered 35 members of the family of Víctor Patiño, a former member of the Cali Cartel, who decided to provide information to the Colombian and US police authorities in exchange for procedural benefits. In addition to the extermination of the Patiño family, the murders of Juan Carlos Ortiz Escobar aka “Cuchilla” and Luis Ocampo Fómeque aka “Tocayo” are attributed to him.

Juan Carlos Ramírez and his obsession with “caletas”

Besides lollipops he had another obsession: “caletas”. By such they are understood voluminous packages of cash that he hid in his properties. Police authorities reported the seizure of four of them with amounts of 68, 21 and two of 17 million US dollars, in addition to 309 gold bars valued at 6.3 million dollars.

“Chupeta” used to keep the money in cash by packing it in vacuum-sealed plastic bags to reduce the effects of moisture on the bills. Experts estimate that no less than 2 million dollars in cash must have been lost in the jaws of insects.

Juan Carlos Ramírez with the proceeds of his illicit activities, during his stay in Brazil he acquired 28 mostly luxury real estate properties in the cities of Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Paraná, Santa Catarina, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Curitiba and Sao Paulo.

¿How was Juan Carlos Ramírez Abadía Captured?

The end of his partnership with Wilber Varela aka “Jabón” led him to leave Colombia to settle in Brazil, where he received the profits of his extensive distribution network installed in the cities of Los Angeles and New York after going through an intricate web of companies located in places as far apart as New York, Mexico City, Madrid, Montevideo and Sao Paulo as a final destination in order to complicate the eventual tracking of funds that the judicial authorities of the countries where he carry out his illegal activities could do.

His efforts to circumvent the authorities trying to disguise his activities associated with drug trafficking and money laundering, as well as resorting to plastic surgeries to modify facial features and make it difficult to identify them, were useless since he was captured along with 12 collaborators on August 7, 2007, as a final result of the investigations in which organizations actively engaged in combating drug trafficking from the United States, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Colombia and Spain actively participated. In July 2008, the Brazilian government handed him over to judicial agents of the United States.

The capture of “Chupeta” meant the fall of the last Colombian drug trafficker of the nineties; According to the authorities, the amount of money produced by Chupeta’s business exceeds the one of Pablo Escobar Gaviria. It is estimated that he came to own a fortune of 28 billion dollars.

Juan Carlos Ramírez Abadía and Television

The druglord appears in the popular series The Snitch Cartel under the name of John Mario Martínez, aka Pirulito. In the first season, the actor Juan Pablo Raba plays him, while in the second season the actor Camilo Sáenz does the job.